


Kalkhas

by periferal



Category: RWBY
Genre: Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, FIx It, Precognition, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 11:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12386889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/periferal/pseuds/periferal
Summary: What if Jaune's semblance was prophecy?Dreams Jaune has a child affect how he acts in the present.Perhaps it will even change things for the better.(καλχας was an ancient seer.)





	Kalkhas

_ He was running through a city like no other he had ever seen. It was metal, made entirely of barriers and moving statues. He was seeking someone, someone important, but every time he got closer to her there would be Grimm in the way. As he ran, new walls appeared, forcing to change course. With every turn his chances of saving her diminished. He felt her weakening, felt her life-force as though it were his own. A grand battle was raging around him against the Grimm and strange almost people-shaped things made out of silver, white and black. The world flickered like a bad drawing poorly rendered on a cracked screen.  _

_ Finally,  _ finally _ , he made it. He had successfully avoided all the Grimm, all the barriers, and now he was here, where  _ she _ was. It was an impossibly tall tower at the very center of this strange city, and he forced himself to climb it. This should have been impossible for there were no handholds or footholds, but he managed. By some dream logic he climbed upwards forever. _

_ He found the edge and pulled himself up over it. As he did, he saw her, the one he was seeking, the one he had come to save. She was beautiful. Her hair was a fiery red and she wore a storybook hero’s armor. Her weapons were like his grandfather’s but better. Her eyes were bright green. When she noticed him, she smiled.  _

_ Suddenly, he too was armed. His grandfather’s weapons, sword and shield, little more than wooden playthings compared to hers. His was so much weaker than her, but he had to save her. _

_ She was kneeling. The change was sudden, from one moment to the next, the reel skipping from her standing to her on the ground. He realized, to his mounting horror, that she knelt because she had been shot in the heel with an arrow. She was turned away from him because a faceless woman in red had an arrow pointed at her chest. _

_ “Do you believe in destiny?” the girl asked. For the first time, he knew her face. _

_ Pyrrha. _

 

_ Another skip. An arrow pierced Pyrrha’s chest. She broke into pieces, her skin cracking as she screamed without noise. As he watched, she blew away. _

_ The woman in red laughed.  _

_ Pyrrha was dead. _

 

Jaune woke up in that strange half-paralyzed state where he wasn’t sure where he was, how old he was, or whether or not the events of the dream he had just left were real or not. His chest hurt with terror. This lessened somewhat as he remembered that he was in the JNPR dorm at Beacon, that he was just waking up from a dream, not a memory. 

He pushed himself up to a sitting position. 

Nora had forgotten to close the blinds on her window, and the dim light from the courtyard outside cast the whole room in gray shadows. 

Pyrrha’s bed was across the room from his. He let himself stare at her. She was just as achromatic as everything else, the light from the window giving color only to a patch of rug in the middle of the floor. She was asleep, he assured himself. 

And yet, he found himself getting out of bed. He was just going to get a closer look, check there were no strange glowing cracks in her skin. He would make sure she wasn’t going to fall apart as he slept, and he would then go back to bed.

He tried his best to walk noiselessly across the room, terrified of waking a teammate. He didn’t want them to know about his dreams, there was already enough pressure on all of them because of the upcoming tournament. 

He passed through the patch of light, noting how it gave weak color to the parts of him it touched. 

Oh shattered moon, he could still hear the woman’s laughter. 

He succeeded in crossing to Pyrrha’s bed without waking Nora or Ren on his way. Now that he was there, he stood frozen, staring at her just as he had been. She was whole, still, not about to fall apart as he slept.

He stood like that, watching her, for a long time. Long enough that as he returned to his bed he noticed the first rays of dawn appearing over the horizon. The lights in the courtyard slowly clicked off. The woman’s laughter retreated from his thoughts, and he slept dreamlessly until the morning. 

 

“Jaune, do you believe in destiny?” 

Her words echoed, buzzing in his thoughts and he felt sickness rise to his throat. “I don’t know,” he said. “What are you asking?”

“If you were given the chance to do something great,” she said, her face pale and thin and pinched, “something that might hurt you, but also might give you the power to overcome great evil, what would you do?”

_ Do you believe in destiny?  _ Pyrrha’s voice, but in his head this time. Jaune’s vision swam. He was back on the roof, watching her shatter. The image looped. He had only a dim awareness of Pyrrha staring at him, upset but transfixed.

“I would take it,” he felt himself say. The words came from beyond him, as though he were merely a mouthpiece for Something else. “Because no one else could.”

The image changed. Pyrrha, triumphant, or at the very least alive, stood instead of knelt. 

Jaune gasped. He realized he had not been breathing, despite having spoken. “Pyrrha,” he said, staring at her. “You’re alive.”

“Yes?” Pyrrha said. 

“Promise me something,” Jaune said, his voice coming out harsher than he meant it to. “Make sure you stay that way.”

The last things he saw for a long, long time, were Pyrrha’s eyes widenas he collapsed. The last thing he felt was the hard ground under his head.


End file.
